The time has come, my friends, to declare a victor in the 2016 Hooniversal Car of the Year proceedings. And it isn’t even a car. Or running. Or finished. It may not be any of those things, but it certainly is awesome, and as voted by the fans, deserving of the victory, and by extension, the much-vaunted and highly coveted participation ribbon.

As with most votes in 2016, this one held a major upset that the vote organizers could never have predicted, and even the nominee was almost not nominated without a little cajoling from Jeff and a bit from me. Did anyone expect it to win? Not really, not even our resident Motorcycle Maven Tanshanomi. Click the jump to see more.

Here is that cajoling I was talking about. Jeff plays the part of the good cop, convincing Pete that surely there must be something he’s enthusiastic enough to write about. Meanwhile, I play the part of the tyrannical dictator. Ultimately we convinced him to make this nomination happen, and you all made it your HCOTY.

So here it is, your HCOTY victor; The “BMW Alpha” custom streamliner motorcycle, having taken 35% of the overall vote with 223 votes. Even someone like me, who has very little motorcycle affinity, can admit that this project is really cool. It’s minimalist and yet full of details, it’s a gorgeous affectation of modern component design mixed with 1950s design language. The builder is a better man than I, for getting even this far with a project.

The design was initiated by a Turkish designer named Mehmet Doruk Erdem, and you can see his original renderings on this design website. Then, a bike designer in Salt Lake City (who goes by Makr on the ADVRider forums) decided to make this bike a reality with a wrecked BMW K75 that was sitting around in his back yard. The guy is still in the process of building the bike, but looks close to finishing it, as there were updates to his build thread as recently as a week ago. The truth is, there were a ton of really great nominations this year, and any one of them deserved to win this prestigious award, but only one of them got the votes. Makr, sir, here is your ribbon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I’ve already been educated twice in the last year about the irrelevance of the popular vote.

crank_case

I won’t be over at Jalopnik, but I don’t get the love for this thing either. I appreciate the craftsmanship for sure, but my vote went to the GT86 cup car (and not the butchered drift thingy either), because even though it’s pretty “normal” by Hooniverse standards I guarantee you’d have more fun in it than anything else on the list. The Bowman things nice if you like sleeping in the arse end of nowhere I guess, at least it could tow the GT86…

0A5599

While I agree with your sentiments (except returning to that J site) for all the same reasons, I appreciate the tradition of HCOTY frequently getting it wrong due to outside influences. Or just getting it wrong.

Still, who among us hasn’t fostered an unfinished useless project (*coughWOMBAT/SKYLINERcough*) for far too long?

But don’t be surprised if one day mangled pieces of it are found in the underside of Bowman’s front bumper.

Thank you. I am most honored. I am sorry Alpha has upset some of you. For the record it is done and running, although I wouldn’t venture to ride it far. Alpha really pales to Danny Thompson’s streamliner, and that is who should have won.